on 31/5/03 11:04 pm, Mark D. Lew at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > At 1:41 PM 05/31/03, David W. Fenton wrote: > >> I'm using the term "musical" in the same sense that you would when >> you say "well, he may have a conservatory degree, but he's just not >> very musical." Obviously, that wasn't clear, and, on the face of it, >> my statement is absurd, as you point out. > > I had this discussion in rec.music.opera not long ago. I mentioned that I > found a certain singer's interpretations to be "unmusical". I expected > plenty of disagreement with my opinion, which I know is in the minority. > What surprised me was that several respondents didn't understand the term > at all. They seemed to think I was suggesting the guy sang the wrong notes > or something, and insisted that whether he was "musical" was an objective > standard that could be measured, when in fact it's just the opposite.
One of the most technically accomplished percussionists I've known was at my music college - she was spot on, no matter what you put in front of her. However, she was completely missing the "musicality gene" in her makeup - I once remember spotting her tutor chain-smoking and looking seriously wound up, and it turned out he was frustrated by the fact that he had just spent 3/4 hour trying to explain to her that her performance was lacking musicality in the phrasing, and being dumbfounded by her inability to understand such a concept - apparently she kept asking whether she was playing the notes right and at the right time and at the right dynamic, and was herself getting upset at his insistence that she *was* playing everything right but that it was still 'unmusical'... his final retort was that he could get just as musical a performance out of his Atari ST and a Yamaha DX7 (ahem, this was back in the late '80s, when such gear was considered *seriously* high-tech!!). Musicality - it's a hard thing to define, but such an easy thing to identify. BFN Steve Sandiford in sunny Manchester, UK (returning to lurk mode) PS Be warned - I hear she's planning on emigrating to the USA!! _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
